192 Chapter IX
sense the psychological discomfort felt by people outside the aristocratic world, the
yearning to live in a better country where solid merit would receive due recogni-
tion, the voluntary absenteeism or moral rejection of existing European society
that was the ultimate cause of the coming revolution in Europe. In Europe, we are
told, talent may be a sad and futile gift; it is not so in America. America is the land
Où sans distinction de naissance et de rang,
L’homme le plus honnête et le plus respectable,
Le plus utile enfin, soit toujours le plus grand.^20The author of these verses was a secrétaire- interprète at the French Foreign Office,
and no doubt had in mind actual barriers in the way of his own advancement.
Mme. Roland, the future Girondist, had similar feelings about her husband, one of
the government inspectors of manufactures. Meditating in 1782 on his difficulties
as a public servant with men of more influence than he had, she had this to say to
him: “I abhor from the depths of my soul a State, or the social manners, in which
a virtuous man may be obliged to measure himself with a vile creature often un-
worthy of his anger. What a frightful government which leaves such unequal
things in balance! M. Lanthenas [a friend of the family] is quite justified in my
eyes in fleeing to Pennsylvania. I wish I were with you in the wilderness.”^21
Much the same feeling of frustration can be detected in Germany. A professor
at Giessen, in a journal which he edited at Frankfurt, observed in 1776 that the
Americans were “the most fortunate people of the whole earth... at least among
the civilized nations. They do not even know the names of many burdens borne by
subjects in Europe.”^22 And he thought it a wonder that half Europe had not al-
ready emigrated there. Even Sprengel, one of the Göttingen circle who at first
defended England, remarked after the war that most of the American states had
become more democratic in becoming independent, that no distinctions of class or
privilege existed, and that any man by his own talents could obtain any position.
Another professor—a class of people more in the forefront of ideas in Germany
than in France or England at this time—anonymously published a poem called
“Die Freiheit Amerikas” in the Berliner Monatschrift in 1783, on the occasion of
the treaty recognizing American independence. It is tempting to see in it a symbol
of Germany itself, for the author, after appealing to Europe to rejoice and to free
itself, after vaguely threatening princes and calling nobles the plague of Europe,
and after pathetically asking America to take him to its bosom to allay his sorrows,
is reminded that he is a German, hears the clank of his chains, sees the vision fade,
and, in political helplessness, simply weeps.
Frei bist du! (sag’s im höheren Siegeston,
Entzücktes Lied!) frei, frei nun, Amerika!20 L. G. Bourdon, Voyage d ’Amérique: dialogue en vers entre l ’auteur et l ’abbé (Paris, 1786), 23.
21 Lettres de Mme. Roland (Paris, 1900), I, 182.
22 H. M. G. Koster in Neuste Staatsbegebenheiten (Frankfurt, 1775–1779), quoted in Gallinger,
Deutsche Publicistik, 21–22.